October 04, 2012 -- Zombie attacks are being played out against a backdrop of aerial photography from Bluesky, with help from Binary Space’s “Zombie Outbreak Simulator” iPhone app. Players around the world can simulate zombies attacking locations within the UK, controlling, for example, zombie numbers, speed, weapon accuracy and infection times. The aerial photomaps provided by Bluesky allow players to view the unfolding conflicts in real world context, with detail including building access, parked cars and even people!

Zombie Outbreak Simulator and Class 3 Outbreak were originally developed by games developer Binary Space for use on the PC. Using a backdrop of Google Maps, including aerial images of the UK from Bluesky, more than 3 million games have been played to date with civilians battling against zombie invaders. In 2011 Binary Space decided to produce a version of Zombie Outbreak Simulator for the iOS (formerly iPhone OS, the Apple mobile operating system).

“When we ported Zombie Outbreak Simulator to the iPhone we were still using Google Maps,” commented developer Jay Weston of Binary Space. “Unfortunately Apple announced they were dropping support for it so we had to come up with a solution – fast! We tried scouring the Internet for alternatives but were unable to find images that were of sufficient quality and at a high enough resolution, nor, in most cases, could we see what we were getting.”

He continued, “As we had already used Bluesky photomaps in the PC version of our games this seemed an obvious solution. The team at Bluesky was extremely attentive and helped us out enormously plus we know the images won’t be updated without our knowledge and no one will cease supporting them.”

Since launch earlier this year Zombie Outbreak Simulator for use on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has been well received. Placed by Apple staff in their ‘favourite app’ list and peaking in the top 5 for Simulation and Strategy games and consistently ranking in the top 200 overall games in the US app store listings.

The aerial images supplied by Bluesky form part of their off the shelf archive of high resolution, georeferenced aerial imagery. With nationwide coverage this is the most up to date, most comprehensive, widely used, orthorectified photography available in the UK today. New aerial photographs are continually added through a five-year rolling program.